Avalanches on Makalu are rare.

The pyramidal mountain rises only 12 miles southeast of its more famous cousin, Mount Everest, in the Himalayas. At nearly 28,000 feet above sea level, it is the fifth-highest peak on Earth and more than three times higher than Utah’s Mount Olympus.

Temperatures on Makalu, especially at higher elevations, often dip below zero in climbing season, and are as cold as -40 degrees in winter. And it’s very dry, a difficult environment in which to form snow, which requires moisture in addition to low temperatures.

On the off chance there is a major storm, the rocky slopes are so steep that snow typically blows right off the mountain instead of sticking to the dangerous pathways carved by generations of adventurous mountaineers and their Nepalese Sherpa guides.

But there are always exceptions to the norm, often with tragic consequences.

May quickly became a devastating run of disasters as hikers on Mount Everest, Makalu and other Himalayan peaks were slammed by a series of unexpected storms. Weather conditions and avalanches claimed the lives of experienced mountaineers from all over the world, including 53-year-old Shelley Johannesen, a Kamas resident and co-founder of Dash Adventures. Her life and business partner, David Ashley, survived the ordeal.

Life, love and a passion for adventure

“The Shelley I knew was different from the Shelley you would hear about from her children or her family because we met late in life,” Ashley said. “She had decided not to work anymore when COVID hit because she was really enjoying endurance running and adventure racing. She wanted to take a different direction in her life.”

The pandemic ushered in an era of change for Johannesen, who met Ashley when he hosted a rim-to-rim Grand Canyon run shortly before lockdowns started. The two were active in local Facebook groups in Virginia, where they lived. They connected online and then in person over their passion for endurance challenges.

The couple loved adventure racing in particular, which involves trail running, mountain biking and paddling a kayak or canoe to find checkpoints outdoors with only a compass and a map for navigation. Ashley, who had retired from the military after 27 years of service, invited Johannesen to join his racing team after she impressed him with her speed.

“We got along great, and then when both of our marriages ended in late 2023, we started dating,” Ashley said. “The rest was her chasing me and me chasing her through the woods ever since.”

As they grew closer, they started to explore the world together: jetsetting to Spain and the United Kingdom for adventure racing competitions. But after more than 20 years of adventure racing, Ashley discovered a love of high-altitude mountaineering, and a new hobby soon consumed him — conquering the highest mountain peaks on Earth.

“I’m a living kidney donor, and I wanted to raise awareness about how you can be a living donor and still live a life full of adventure, endurance and athletics, so I decided to climb what’s known as the Seven Summits, which are the highest mountains in each continent,” Ashley said. “Eleven months and two weeks later, I had done all seven. I finished on Mount Everest on May 13, 2022.”

Ashley and Johannesen started Dash Adventures for a similar reason. They hoped to create a connection and a sense of community among high-altitude mountain climbers in the wake of the pandemic, especially as Johannesen started to fall in love with climbing, too. The two then started leading their own treks, inviting friends and clients to join them on renowned climbs across the world.

Dash Adventures has a simple motto that Ashley said encapsulates how he and Johannesen approached their lives: climbing mountains and making friends.

“You put your cellphone down for a week or two and really get to know the people that you’re with in an environment where there’s nothing like it, like Machu Picchu (in Peru), Cayambe down in Ecuador,” Ashley said. “I really love the different cultures, the different food and bringing people and exposing them to that, seeing the joy that they find in it.”

Leading Dash Adventures meant Ashley and Johannesen could climb mountains more often, and they quickly realized that living 300 feet above sea level in Virginia didn’t do them any favors. So they packed up, traveled around the United States and ultimately decided to move to Kamas two years ago.

“I feel like we found a gem with thousands of trails to explore, tons of reservoirs to paddle,” Ashley said. “We figured we’d spend pretty much the rest of our lives exploring this area.”

The couple joined the Wasatch Mountain Club and started hiking Utah trails like Grandeur Peak and Mount Olympus. The treks were an “epic preparation” for their international travels, especially because it’s possible to have a vertical gain of 1,000 to 2,000 feet in only one mile of hiking, depending on the trail.

Ashley said he enjoys hobbies with an element of risk because it makes him feel more alive. He said Johannesen came to love adventure later in life after spending decades as a wife and mother of three. As her children grew up, she explored the outdoor endurance lifestyle and ultrarunning. That became a great transition into adventure racing, Ashley said.

The couple balanced each other well, with Ashley taking the lead on treks because of his more extensive mountaineering experience. He served as the trip leader on Dash Adventures excursions, making sure people were on time, had the right equipment and were properly trained for a climb. Ashley said their dynamic was successful.

“Shelley was much more of a people person. Her emotional IQ was off the charts, and mine’s probably negative,” he joked. “She would pick up on when someone was struggling, so she would come up and find out if they’re getting a blister or if they need a water bottle or if they’re thinking about their wife back home because they’re having marital problems, and she would pull that out slowly. She was masterful in working with people.”

The avalanche

The fatal journey in Nepal was originally advertised as a Dash Adventures trip, but no one signed up to tackle the 27,838-foot summit. The duo decided to climb the mountain anyway, enlisting the help of a Sherpa guide company Ashley had worked with since 2022.

Ashley and Johannesen landed in Kathmandu on April 5. They checked their gear, bought some supplies and headed to the village of Num.

The weather was already showing signs of unpredictability as the couple made the nine-day hike through the foothills in the mountains to Makalu’s base camp, a staggering 18,600 feet above sea level. The tallest mountain in Utah — Kings Peak in Duchesne County — is only 13,500 feet above sea level at its summit.

Snow pelted them as they hiked from Num, and they spent three weeks acclimatizing on the mountain, traveling from low camps to high camps and back again, until they were ready to approach the summit.

“Makalu is known for high winds and cold, and most injuries that happen on Makalu are related to that, like frostbite,” Ashley said. “We just missed a window in late April where we could have gone up, and then there were nine days of high winds. We were sitting there at base camp twiddling our thumbs.”

Conditions seemingly changed after weeks of waiting, and the group was told there would be at least three days of good weather with low winds. The couple joined forces with Tawa Sherpa and Sonom Sherpa, guides from Nepal trained to take mountaineers on dangerous high-altitude climbs. They set off for the summit and reached it late in the morning on May 9.

“The weather started to change on our way down,” Ashley said. “There was one other climber who got there after us, a Russian named Konstantin. He has his own story, but he’s probably going to lose all of his fingers and part of his thumb from frostbite because he had a problem coming down later behind us.”

As the group started their descent, they faced snow drifts up to their thighs, a sight incredibly rare at such a high elevation on Makalu. Wading through the snow took a lot of energy, slowing their pace and forcing them to camp overnight. Ashley said they packed enough bottled oxygen to sleep with, aiding in their recovery, because a 24-hour day above almost 28,000 feet is “pretty tough.”

“The wind and snow were so bad,” Ashley said. “Normally, you can unzip your tent, and you’ve got a vestibule, and you can light your stove, put some snow in there, melt it and make water for everybody, which takes a long time at that elevation. But the wind was blowing the snow so much that the stove wouldn’t even stay lit.”

The group zipped the tent up and moved the oxygen bottles as far away as possible before lighting the gas stove, hoping to create at least some water for the continued descent the next day. It was slow work, though, and Ashley estimated they each had only half a liter of water by the morning.

The weather forecast for May 10 claimed winds would die down by 10 a.m., allowing the group to make their way down the mountain. But the winds did not stop, and the group had to keep moving.

“With that deep snow, it was going to take us the rest of the day to get safely down. … We didn’t want to be out there in the dark,” Ashley said. “We couldn’t take the tent because there was so much snow and it had hardened with the wind, so it would have taken an inordinate amount of energy to break through that crust, get the guidelines out, get the tent out, and at that point, we’re running low on oxygen and need to get going.”

They abandoned their tent, and Tawa, who had summited Makalu five times and had the most experience, led the way. In a line of four, the two Americans and two Sherpas headed into the snowstorm, facing winds blowing between 50 and 60 mph.

After hiking for about half an hour in a flatter area, they transitioned to ropes secured to the mountain with ice screws. With the wind whipping their faces, they started a precarious 500-foot descent, pausing to switch to a different rope halfway down.

Tawa and Johannesen were 10 feet ahead of Ashley and his guide, Sonom, and easily made the transition to the second rope. But then Ashley looked up and spotted a crack in the snow — and the ground started to move. An avalanche had been triggered.

Ashley and Sonom stopped moving with about 10 feet left on their line. The force and speed of the snow wasn’t strong enough to break their rope, but the same wasn’t true for Johannesen and Tawa.

“I looked down, and I saw this ball of white go off a rock. I could see a rope flapping in the breeze, and I could see one of Tawa’s mitts on a rock. That’s all we could see,” Ashley said.

The terrain added to fears for their companions. It was a rocky area known as the crux of the hike, a steep section where mountaineers need to navigate boulders to avoid crashing into them on the cliffside. 

Ashley and Sonom knew they had to find Johannesen and Tawa, but they had no idea in what state they’d be in, or if a rescue was possible.

“Would they be buried? Would they have tons of broken bones?” Ashley said. “The odds of how they could survive that were low, but of course we have to assume they did. Sonom and I free climbed down, because we didn’t trust the rope anymore. … Then we blew whistles, we yelled, but the winds were blowing, it was snowing, and we had maybe 30 to 40 feet of visibility. We couldn’t see anything.”

Sonom took the lead, picking his way through the boulders to reach the cliffside where they thought Johannesen and Tawa landed. But they soon realized there was another problem.

Days earlier, the group had gifted one of their two radios to a Sherpa guide responsible for shepherding the Russian, Konstantin, to the summit. Tawa had kept the remaining radio, which was now lost with him in the avalanche.

Ashley grabbed his Garmin inReach, a small, satellite communicator that lets hikers text emergency responders and share GPS coordinates. He managed to contact the owners of a guiding company in Kathmandu, who called the base camp to alert the rescue coordinator stationed at one of the higher elevation areas.

The group was stranded between Camp 2, which is 21,650 feet above sea level, and Camp 3, 24,600 feet above sea level. The rescue team would be departing from Camp 2, but Konstantin’s Sherpa guide was still at Camp 3, where he heard the avalanche and was told to help if at all possible. Ashley said the Sherpa climbed down quickly, giving them access to a radio.

“We climbed a little bit further down, very slowly, trying to find them. Nothing, nothing, nothing,” Ashley said. “Then we got a radio call from Shelley. She was alive. Tawa was alive. They were both so injured they couldn’t even stand up. She was crawling on the snow, and they were about 10 feet from a big cliff.”

The rescue attempt

Johannesen and Tawa could see the fixed lines on the cliffside, but they couldn’t reach the ropes themselves. Johannesen grabbed her ice axe, secured it and hooked her and Tawa’s safety devices onto it, preventing them from accidentally careening off the side of the mountain.

She then pulled out her sleeping bag, and the pair used it to block the wind.

“Unfortunately, where they stopped near a cliff, the winds are almost always very strong, and that’s where they were,” Ashley said. “These insane gusts would come, and you would just get pelted by ice particles.”

Johannesen described what she could see over the radio, and Sonom accelerated down the mountain to find them. The avalanche happened around noon, and Sonom reached the two injured hikers around three hours later. Ashley followed, reaching the group about an hour after that.

Johannesen and Tawa were perched on a steep cliffside with only their safety devices keeping them from sliding over the edge as snow and winds continued to slam the mountain.

Miraculously, they did not have any compound fractures and weren’t visibly bleeding. But Tawa was complaining of severe lower back pain, and Johannesen said her hips and her right side were hurting so badly that she couldn’t stand up to walk. Despite their injuries, they seemed alert, awake and aware of the situation.

Ashley pulled out his sleeping bag, too. The four — Ashley, Johannesen, Sonom and Tawa — settled in to wait for the rescue team they were told would reach them in less than three hours. Yet no one came.

“We heard that the winds were … around 70 miles an hour that afternoon, and the six-person rescue team was worried about their own safety, so they had to turn back,” Ashley said. “It was starting to get dark, and now we had nobody coming, no tent and two sleeping bags between the four of us.”

Sonom, worried about the group’s depleting oxygen resources, volunteered to trek down to Camp 2 to get more supplies and convince the rescue team to come back. As he left, he tried to convince Ashley to come with him, but Ashley refused, saying he needed to stay with Johannesen.

“He went down, and we stayed there lying on the snow all night,” Ashley said. “Occasionally, I’d lift up the sleeping bag just to peek and see if there were any headlamps coming. I think it was around midnight, and I saw two headlamps.”

Around 2:30 a.m., a small group reached them. They replenished their oxygen supplies, which likely saved Tawa’s life because oxygen allows the body to stay warmer, and he had already lost one of his mittens. But Ashley started getting nervous when Johannesen refused oxygen.

“She was getting a little loopy at this point, saying things that didn’t really make sense,” he said. “She was scooting away from me in the sleeping bag out into the wind, and I’d have to pull her back in. She kept asking about Tawa and wanted to check on Tawa. … That was the first time I realized there was something really not right with Shelley.”

Then the supply team left, leaving the group on the mountain without a tent in extreme weather. They didn’t have the manpower or ability to rescue the group because of the harsh conditions, so the three remaining hikers huddled down to sleep, hoping things would change in the morning.

The next morning

When Ashley awoke, Johannesen’s head was still in his lap, but at a strange angle. He had spent the night waking intermittently, trying to fix an oxygen mask to Johannesen’s face before giving up after she continued to push him away.

Ashley told her to wake up, shaking her when he didn’t get a response. He was confused and exhausted after spending more than 10 hours at 23,400 feet above sea level without oxygen, and he was dehydrated and malnourished.

He thought maybe Johannesen was feeling the same way, too exhausted to rouse herself from sleep.

“I turned her head and she was covered with snow,” Ashley said. “That’s not normal. I’m trying to get it off her face. … I realized there was something really wrong. I said, ‘Tawa, please help.’ He looked at Shelley, and he looked away. I checked her pulse. I checked her breathing. Gone. She died in my arms.”

Ashley grabbed his Garmin inReach and demanded a helicopter rescue, but the operators said there was no way they could make it happen, considering the strength of the winds and the high altitude. Tawa told Ashley it was time. They had to leave, or they risked further complications; Tawa showed Ashley his fingers that had turned black from frostbite.

Ashley, in shock, started working his way down the mountain. Tawa managed to follow despite a broken back and damaged hands, hoping he could at least make it to a low enough altitude to get help. They made it to Camp 2, and a helicopter picked them up and flew them to a hospital in Kathmandu.

The rescue team also returned to the mountain to retrieve Johannesen’s body.

“She wasn’t stuck on the mountain. She could have gotten buried in the snow, or she could have frozen to the snow, so I’m so grateful that they did that,” Ashley said.

It was May 11, and the group spent more than 14 hours at 23,400 feet without protection, risking severe frostbite, altitude sickness and exposure in their efforts to rescue Johannesen and Tawa. 

Sonom was unscathed and able to go home immediately, but Tawa and Ashley were checked into the intensive care unit, and Ashley discovered he also had frostbite on his fingers and toes — some of which had turned black.

“I think that’s from holding the sleeping bag because I was holding it with my right foot and my right hand, and just that little bit of pressure is enough to keep the blood from flowing as well as it should have in that digit,” Ashley said.

Once he had a moment to himself in the hospital, Ashley started writing his account of the avalanche and sent it to Johannesen’s ex-husband and children. He wanted to make sure they heard the details from him instead of the news outlets that had already picked up the story.

Then he called Johannesen’s family to explain the situation over the phone and began coordinating with the U.S. embassy, which has a specific process it follows when an American dies in a foreign country.

“I was able to get out of the ICU the next day,” Ashley said. “They had a couple of IVs in me because I was really dehydrated. I stayed locally in Nepal for over a week, dealing with all of the things you have to do when somebody passes in a foreign country.”

Ashley also organized a funeral for Johannesen in Nepal, a Buddhist celebration known as a puja. Johannesen wasn’t Buddhist herself, but Ashley said it was a fitting ceremony because she loved Nepalese culture.

“Her wishes were to be cremated,” Ashley said. “I think this is what she would have wanted. It was powerful, a beautiful ceremony that they did for her.”

After the ceremony, Ashley traveled home to Kamas and immediately built what he calls a memory space for Johannesen, a display of her ashes, photos of the couple and other important belongings. It’s a way to keep her with him.

“I keep a candle lit. I burn incense, and I feel like she’s here in this house,” Ashley said.

Ashley also started a fundraiser for Tawa, who is unsure if he’ll ever be able to return to work as a Sherpa. More than $20,000 was raised to help pay his medical bills and cover equipment lost on the upper mountain during the rescue, including Tawa’s personal gear.

“That money’s there to help his family and make amends for that,” Ashley said.

Remembering Shelley

Ashley described Johannesen as someone dedicated to building bonds with people. He said she chased mountain peaks and pushed herself to participate in difficult treks not for glory, but for the connection it created with other adventurers.

“She was like a catalyst to help other people,” Ashley said. “We both said we want to climb mountains and make friends. … We like having fun people around us. They say your vibe attracts your tribe. We’re high altitude trekkers and climbers, and the people that we hang out with are the same. We’ve made some really good friends.”

Johannesen’s friends in Utah have been celebrating her memory, too. 

The Wasatch Mountain Club held a memorial campfire and potluck in her honor, as well as a memorial hike on Mount Olympus. The Mount Olympus trail was the last hike Johannesen and Ashley did before they left for Nepal.

“I couldn’t join them because of the frostbite healing on my foot, but I was able to meet them at the bottom and thank them for coming,” Ashley said. “Everywhere I go, someone might recognize Shelley from a newspaper article. They always understand what avalanches do … because they take people’s lives here, and I think we’re fortunate to live in a community that gets it. There’s nothing you can do. That makes the grief that much harder.”

For now, Ashley is trying to take things slow. 

He’s committed to not making any big changes for at least six months, and he’s still waiting for his frostbitten toes to recover. But despite the trauma and pain, Ashley said he plans to get back to the mountains soon, with a trip to hike Mount Rainier and Mount Hood scheduled for October.

“The people I’m climbing Rainier with were checking in on me, and someone asked, ‘Hey, Dave, are you ready?’” Ashley said. “I’ll find out when I’m there, but I think I need to. I need to get back in the mountains because if I stay out too long and I think about it too much, it might be too difficult. I think the best thing to do once the frostbite’s healed … is to get the boots back on, grab the ice axe and get after it again.”

The post The long descent after Makalu appeared first on Park Record.

Eighteen-year-old Heber City folk singer-songwriter Canyon Cottle’s debut album, “September,” which was released in February, is littered with nods to the Wasatch Back. 

“Kids Up in Kamas,” for example, is an ode to both the eastern Summit County town and Heber City’s agricultural roots.

“I’m almost jealous of the kids up in Kamas for having everything that this town was. … Things (have been) growing exponentially, especially after COVID,” Cottle said. “That entire town just reminds me of what it looked like (in Heber City) before I was born. When I was younger, we’d drive up and go to the swimming pool. It looked almost like a ghost town in certain spots because it was just so quaint.”

The second track, “Pine Canyon,” refers to a scenic drive on the titular Midway road. 

Meanwhile, the title track mentions driving past a tree in front of a house with initials carved into it. This lyric is not based on a specific location. It was, in fact, by Cottle’s grandmother after he showed her the song during a camping trip.

“She was like, ‘Can I write some lyrics for you? It needs to be more preppy and lovely and happy and goo-goo eyes.’ I was like, ‘OK, Grandma, whatever. I’m writing songs about painful crap,’” Cottle joked. “She’s like, ‘Yeah, but what about love and romance?’”

A tree with initials carved into it is something Cottle would brand as cliché. Incorporating the lyric anyway is Cottle’s embrace of the simple, tender aspects of life and a shout-out to both his grandmother and the countless engraved aspens in Heber City.

The album’s structure is based on the progression of the seasons. Cottle wrote “Lovely, Aren’t They” on the banjo in the driveway of his house, taking inspiration from the falling leaves surrounding him. In the song, he likens the arrival of autumn to the death of a relationship.

“For a lot of people, that’s the most heart-wrenching, painful thing to ever experience, watching something wither and die. For me, that’s pretty natural. That’s normal. I watch crops die and disappear in the fall. The corn stalks kind of wither and go away, and you have to clean them up, and leaves, and all the things. That’s life,” he said.

Lead single “Smoke in the Sky” also takes inspiration from a breakup. Cottle’s gravelly growl at the beginning of the acoustic chorus intentionally imitates a chainsmoker’s cadence.

The song’s guttural feeling clearly resonated with listeners. Despite being the first song the teenage songwriter had ever released, it was a breakout hit, with over 175,000 streams on Spotify alone since its release last April. 

The experience inflated Cottle’s ego quite a bit, he joked.

“Spotify has an app where you can check your stats 24/7 and look at things. Not the most healthy thing you could do with your life,” Cottle laughed. “(A few days after the song was released), I’m in the commons of Wasatch (High School), and I flip it up to see if anyone looks over my shoulder to look at the stats with me. And there were 40 people listening to the track at the same time.”

Cottle attributes the song’s popularity to its catchy hook and producer Luke Despain’s placement of the song on official Spotify playlists. On top of that, the stylistic influence of the stratospherically popular folk singer Noah Kahan probably helped.

Having a song with more streams than there are people in the entire Wasatch Back has been surreal for Cottle: getting side-eyed in school hallways, being asked for a few autographs and being recognized in Walmart by a little girl who called him that “singer guy.”

It’s a far cry from Cottle writing his first songs on guitar and piano in his freshman year, often procrastinating math homework at the Wasatch County Library by going down a rabbit hole of live performances by artists like The Backseat Lovers, a Provo-formed rock band, and Billy Joel. Those influences, along with performing in Timpanogos Valley Theatre and High Valley Arts productions as a kid, formed Cottle’s stage presence.

“It was cool to be able to lay my heart out for people to look at — which is the weirdest thing to say — and to have them take pictures,” he said. “It’s exciting because your heart races. You get on stage, and then it’s like the mic disappears because you close your eyes, and then you just play, and it turns into fun.”

Songwriting is fulfilling for an entirely different reason, he said.

“I think songwriting takes in all the different parts of your brain and meshes together what a human sounds like,” he said.

Now that Cottle has graduated from high school, he’s ready to explore whatever challenges the adult world throws at him through songwriting. He plans to move away from the obvious Kahan influence to a raw, emotional indie sound inspired by artists like Phoebe Bridgers or Lizzie McAlpine.

“I want them to feel it more. I feel like there’s a lot of wholesomeness in the music right now,” he explained. “(I want to write) songs with deeper harmonies and melodies that kind of converge, and then build, and then drop and disappear out of nowhere, where it’s just stomach-dropping.”

Cottle hopes to continue writing music throughout his life and to make it a full-time career, whether by opening a recording studio or becoming a professional songwriter.

He’s both excited and concerned by the idea of becoming as famous as someone like Kahan, whose tiny hometown of Strafford, Vermont, has become a bit of a tourist hotspot for superfans because of the lyrical references to it in Kahan’s songwriting. 

As someone who’s experienced more fame than most teenagers, Cottle has had concerns about the same happening to Heber City if he were to become a sensation. For now, Cottle is content with being beloved locally.  

No matter what the future holds for him, Cottle hopes to look back on this season of life with fondness.

“I think I’ll look back (at) now knowing that I tried to embody some sort of positivity or hope,” he said.

Cottle’s next performance will be from 9 to 11 p.m. on Saturday at Jade’s Cafe. He will also be performing at the Heber City Red, White & Blue Festival on Saturday, July 4.

The post Heber City is at the heart of folk musician Canyon Cottle’s songwriting appeared first on Park Record.

U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart dismissed a lawsuit against the City of Kamas last week that claimed local officials had violated state and federal laws by publicly supporting the Kamas Valley Preservation Association, a nonprofit organization that opposed and campaigned against the proposed West Hills incorporation.

The lawsuit, filed by a group of West Hills supporters known as The Preserve, also named the Kamas Valley Preservation Association as a defendant, and the nonprofit’s attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the case in October. They argued the complaint failed to include legitimate legal claims and violated the state’s anti-SLAPP statutes, or laws designed to prevent frivolous lawsuits, especially those related to free speech and public participation.

Stewart’s order last week sided with the nonprofit, and he dismissed both the federal and state claims associated with the case. However, the state claims were dismissed without prejudice, which means the complaint could be filed again in a second lawsuit.

“We always believed The Preserve’s complaint wholly lacked merit and are pleased the court agreed,” said Janet Conway, an attorney representing the Kamas Valley Preservation Association.

Sam Castor, The Preserve’s attorney, told The Park Record on Thursday that his clients intend to pursue further litigation.

Castor filed the lawsuit in federal court last August and named Kamas City, Kamas Mayor Matt McCormick, the Kamas Valley Preservation Association and specific Preservation Association members Jeramy Bristol, Lindy Sternlight and Craig Savage as defendants.

The complaint claimed the defendants “colluded to engage in unlawful government action” when the Kamas City Council voted to support the Preservation Association and its work in the local community, which included a campaign against the proposed West Hills incorporation.

Specifically, the lawsuit alleged the city used “backchannel communications” and “targeted pressure campaigns” that “deceived the public, misused public resources, exploited official platforms and spaces, and built an illegal coalition to manipulate public perception and depress property values to enrich themselves.”

West Hills supporters in the complaint accused Kamas and the Kamas Valley Preservation Association of six alleged abuses, which have now been dismissed: a violation of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, civil conspiracy, a violation of the Utah Pattern of Unlawful Activity Act, deprivation of due process and tortious interference with prospective economic relations.

Conway at the time of the lawsuit’s filing said her clients had “done nothing wrong” and were “simply trying to protect” their Constitutional rights.

The proposed West Hills site covered 3,600 acres along S.R. 248 near Kamas. The matter of incorporation was set to appear on last November’s ballot until Third District Judge Matthew Bates ruled the state’s approach to incorporations violated the rights of property owners.

The Utah Supreme Court ultimately upheld Bates’ decision and removed West Hills from the ballot, with judges at both the local and state levels expressing concerns about voter confusion if Bates’ original order were reversed so close to Election Day.

The Supreme Court held oral arguments in February regarding the constitutionality of the incorporation process and the West Hills proposal to make a final decision on the matter, but an opinion has not been published as of Thursday afternoon.

The post Federal judge dismisses lawsuit against Kamas over West Hills involvement appeared first on Park Record.

Madison Goodman is what you might call a wealth of knowledge. Throw him a curveball like how to grow turnips in the heat of Salt Lake summer, and he’ll tip his weathered Pirates ballcap back, scratch his head, then deliver a verbal flow chart: if conditions are this, then this. If not, then try this. 

Where does all that knowledge come from? For one, his mother, who passed it on from the generation before her — and the generation before that.

“I’m a fourth-generation farmer, and I learned from my mom. And from YouTube,” he joked.

After close to a decade of applying that generational knowledge to farming in Utah, Goodman is now spearheading the Ballerina Farm market garden efforts by growing year-round produce on 100 garden beds for the local community.

Originally from western Pennsylvania, Goodman chased snowboarding west to Utah, earning a few degrees before returning to the farming lifestyle he knew best. This time, in an unconventional, urban way.

“I was working in a climbing shop, and one of the guys was like, ‘Hey, look, there’s this guy making money off of farming yards in a city.’ And I was like, I want to do that,” he said. “I reached out. I found some people who were willing to lease me some lawns, and I was able to piece together a good chunk of land in the city. And I just commuted in between all my farming plots with a bike and my tools strapped to it.”

When it was time to land somewhere more rural, he received a loan from the bank and started his farm in Oakley on just shy of an acre. That’s how Madsnacks Produce began, and as a “one-man-show,” Goodman tried just about every market garden technique: from selling to chefs and operating a community-supported agriculture, or CSA, to selling at farmers markets.

Joining the Ballerina family

His CSA introduced him to Hannah and Daniel Neeleman, the now-influencer couple who founded Ballerina Farm in 2017.

“Hannah and Daniel were in my CSA for a few years. They were part of my farm. And over the past few years, every year they’d say, ‘Hey, we’re ready for you to come over and grow vegetables with us whenever you’re ready to,’” Goodman said. “And every year I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I love my farm so much. I’m not quite ready to do that yet.’” 

But eventually the timing worked out, Goodman said, remembering the day when, while working part-time at the Ballerina Farm dairy, he finally told Daniel, “I’ll do it.” It was just too good an opportunity to pass up.

“How they presented it to me is that, ‘Hey, you can have your dream farm here at Ballerina, and let’s work together to create your dream to feed more people,’” he said.

A simple dream farm for Goodman has a few essentials: organic practices, use of a biodynamic calendar, diverse and seasonally driven products, access to on-farm fertility, plus proximity to “eaters.” And Goodman could come closer to his overall goal of feeding more people with the infrastructure, land and financial backing that the Neelemans could bring to the project.

“I never saw myself working for somebody, and then I met Daniel, and I just knew instantly, ‘Oh, this isn’t a person I’m going to work for. This is a person I’m going to work with, and we’re going to create something that specifically the Wasatch Back is missing, which is fresh produce,’” Goodman said. “There are some awesome market gardeners up here. There are just not many people doing it year-round.”

Ballerina Farm started to build out its market garden last September, and when it came to preparing its plot of land off S.R. 248, Goodman explained that he essentially had a clean slate: nutrient-rich land that hadn’t been used for crop production.

Plus, he got to see how the seasons affected the field before putting in garden beds and constructing the “tunnels,” which are garden structures that provide shade and can block wind. 

“As it got closer and closer to the time to break ground, the water table moved, the grasses grew, and then they faded, and you could just see how the land moved over the season, which really depicted how we set it up,” Goodman said. 

So much so that Goodman went to Daniel the day before construction and said, actually, let’s change plans and do it a different way.

“That sporadicness is one of the things I love about working here. People are OK with last-minute decisions,” the farmer said. “The land got to choose it, which was really beautiful.”

Now they’re about six months in, adjusting to the challenges that are unique to the Kamas Valley, like year-round frost, a high water table, and lots and lots of voles — what Goodman calls their “current lunch partner,” not “pests.”

To feed the farm, Goodman uses compost made from the Ballerina Farm dairy cows, fulfilling his dream of a closed-loop system. Manure from the “120 beautiful milking ladies” just down the road is mixed with bedding and any garden leftovers to make a nutrient-rich compost. That’s then added to the soil to help grow more produce, which then goes back to the dairy, round and round in perpetuity. It’s a perk that also drew Goodman to the Ballerina Farm project because it means he knows exactly what’s in his fertilizer and, therefore, what goes into his food.

As for running a biodynamic farm, it’s a skill that Goodman cultivates, teaching the rest of his staff how it works. Biodynamic agriculture details a holistic strategy for growing food that can maximize productivity, following a calendar organized around astrological movements of the stars and the moon for management techniques such as planting, weeding and harvesting.

“We’re looking at a horizontal plane, but I believe there’s a vertical plane. I don’t believe that, I know that. I experience that,” Goodman said. “And what that means is we’re constantly increasing the land to work with the energetic forces that move through the cosmos.”

For him and many in the farming community, biodynamics is a proven science with a direct link to productivity. And for a market gardener, productivity is everything, especially one like Goodman, determined to feed as many people as possible. 

“To give you perspective, I think we could probably feed about 250 families a week over half of the year off of this space … making up probably about 75% of their caloric intake,” he said of the 100 beds at Ballerina Farm. 

Goodman said that basically all the produce sold at the farm stand on the Kamas property and the farm store in Midway has been grown in the garden, except potatoes. His produce is also used in meals coming out of the farm store kitchen, as well as the commissary kitchen, which produces items like the Ballerina Farm basil pesto.

Production will only continue to ramp up, he said, as more of the beds come online. As a year-round, seasonal farm located at 6,500 feet, Goodman also emphasized an ever-changing selection dependent on which products grow best during which month of the year. Embrace it, he said.

Growing workshops

Something that Goodman also introduced to Ballerina Farm is a series of growing workshops, held quarterly in time with each season. It’s something he did every spring at Madsnacks, an educational component that’s also a core value of his.

“I think that passing this knowledge down is super important. And moreover, I believe that the masses shouldn’t be fed by a few. I believe that the masses should be feeding everybody. Everybody should have a garden,” he said. “My ideal scenario is somebody comes to this workshop and they don’t ever have to come back and buy produce from us ever again. They just learned how to do it all themselves.”

While the three-hour workshops merely scratch the surface of the intricacies of market gardening, Goodman does his best to make them overwhelmingly instructive — or your money back, he joked at the start of last month’s spring workshop. 

The morning sessions, which conclude with a garden lunch, are designed for people already growing food or interested in starting. But aside from a loose structure that includes a tour around the farm, a semi-lecture on important steps for that season in the garden, and a hands-on component, the rest is completely catered to the group in attendance.

For the spring workshop, half the group was based in the Wasatch Back while the other half was based in the Salt Lake Valley, meaning Goodman adjusted his information for each person’s context. 

“We often think that you need this big amount of land to grow a lot of food, but the reality is you need a tiny amount of land to grow a lot of food if it’s used very efficiently. And that’s what we’re going to learn today,” he told the group of roughly 20 new and experienced farmers.

The conversation ranged from the importance of row covers to protect against frost and bugs to the best strategies for sprouting and hardening plants. 

And, true to his promise, he packed the session with information, going into each topic with some variation of “If I were going to,” “What I would recommend,” “I think the best thing you can do,” and “There are a few things that I usually do.”

One couple was getting ready to start a home garden close to the Great Salt Lake, so would salinity in the soil be an issue? Another was based in Daybreak, where toxic soil meant raised garden beds were essential. More established gardeners, like a husband and wife based in Woodland, would turn to each other every so often with an “Oh, that’s what happened!” and make a quick note in their booklet.

For the hands-on component, attendees practiced making soil blocks for starting seeds and assembled a compost tea pouch to take home.

Because each workshop is designed for a specific season in the garden, Goodman encouraged people to come to as many as possible. For example, the summer classes, scheduled May 8 and 9, will be different from the spring sessions.

“Instead of the planning and dreaming phase, now you’re at the ‘in it’ phase, where you’re dealing with pests, you’re dealing with weeds, you’re thinking about, ‘Oh, my goodness, should I be pulling this plant to replant something new? How do I make that decision?’” he said.

And of course, tips for summer bleed into fall, which turns into winter, a “fully evolving circle” that gardeners will get to know. 

The workshops, priced at $123 per person, are posted on the Ballerina Farm website at ballerinafarm.com/pages/events. Kids under 10 are welcome for free. 

Adding a garden to the vision

While Ballerina Farm first started with pigs, the steadily growing company — which now produces items like beef, milk, ice cream, eggs, flour and highly popular protein powder — always planned to add a garden to the mix. It’s all part of the founders’ dream to create an agritourism site in Utah.

In late 2024, the Neelemans advanced that vision by annexing their 14-acre parcel into Kamas, and city officials agreed to create a new agricultural tourism zoning to allow visitor-focused development.

The couple’s plans for the Ballerina Farm property at the time included elements like livestock, orchards and gardens, with public-facing amenities such as a farm store, café, creamery and event space.

Now, it’s steadily coming to life: What started as a simple shed-turned-farm stand now has pens for cows and chickens, an ice cream trailer, a covered patio, a barn for events and Goodman’s fully functioning market garden, a central part of the concept. 

“This whole thing that we’re doing out here at 248, it’s about community,” the farmer said. “It’s creating space for people to come in, interact with their food, be able to see the animals, be able to buy our produce and see where it’s being grown.”

He gave the example of chickens, which the farm will soon raise for meat, that people can come and see while they’re out grazing the pasture. It’s all about a transparent, intimate interaction between the “eater” and the food, he said.

“My part in this whole agritourism is bridging this gap that we have where, you go in the grocery store, and you buy a chicken, and you go home and eat it, and you have no idea about how that chicken was handled,” he said. “Here, you’re going to be able to see that chicken … the whole course of its life, up to the day that it’s processed and put in the freezer, and then you get to eat it. Or see the chicken that’s laying your eggs or look at the vegetables that you’re eating.”

While food culture in more rural parts of Utah is still “pioneering,” Goodman said, he praised the Wasatch Back community in particular for their interest in supporting local growers. It’s an attitude that will lead to success in what Ballerina Farm is trying to accomplish, he said.

“I see this resurgence around health and community, and especially here on the Wasatch Back, I see a lot of people really embracing not only local food, but specifically local food grown in a way that is better for their body and is also better for the land,” he said. “People take a lot of pride in living in the Kamas Valley, and I feel like it’s the same in Park City and in Heber. We have pride for where we live. And I think that that is a trickle-down effect in how people purchase local and how they steward the land that we’re on.”

It’s part of why the Ballerina Farm produce grown in the Kamas garden will be sold locally, not shipped nationwide, Goodman said. None of the vegetables he’s growing are listed on the website.

“At the end of the day, there are a lot of things that Ballerina could choose to do, but we are choosing to invest our energy into a community,” Goodman said. 

The addition of the garden also expands farm stand goods to growers, like the recent addition of Ballerina Farm compost for sale. It’s fantastic, Goodman said, especially for those based in the Wasatch Back.

“I can’t think of a more sustainable way of feeding your garden than getting something that’s just miles away and doesn’t have to be shipped,” he said.

And, because he can’t help himself, a tip:

“Now’s the time to apply it. April, great time. Get the compost in the ground. Start working your soil, put the seeds in, it’s going to feed your soil over the course of the whole entire season,” he said.

The post Local farmer’s knowledge, vision seeds a growing market garden at Ballerina Farm appeared first on Park Record.

Tuesday marked 99 years since Heber City resident Ted Crittenden was delivered into the world in his grandmother’s Hoytsville home. There weren’t any hospitals nearby at the time, he explained. 

The soon-to-be centenarian celebrated the milestone by riding the Deer Valley East Village’s 10-passenger gondola with a handful of his five children, 36 grandchildren, 95 great-grandchildren and five great-great-grandchildren.

The 142-cabin gondola opened last autumn. Each of its 40 towers was flown in by a Chinook helicopter. It rises 2,570 feet over the course of the nearly 3-mile journey at 1,400 feet per minute.

Ted was impressed. 

“It’s an absolute miracle of engineering. To get all those poles and all those cables? I can’t believe it,” he gushed.

The gondola ride was facilitated through Ted’s son, Kendall.

Kendall is a Wasatch County Councilor and works regularly with representatives from the Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA), which has a foothold on development in the Deer Valley area. MIDA representatives came up with the idea because Ted is a World War II Navy veteran.

Ted was a 14-year-old student at North Summit High School during the attack on Pearl Harbor and signed up for the draft with several classmates three years later.

After turning 18, he joined the Navy and was shipped off to a boot camp in San Diego. That was in March 1945, six months before the war ended. 

When they arrived at the boot camp, Ted got quite a hoot out of the city boys’ gorgeous locks being shaved off.

“They wasn’t careful about it. These long curls would drop in their lap. It was quite funny,” he laughed.

After intensive training, Ted was loaded onto his first ship with an estimated 1,500 other soldiers.

As the ship traveled under the Golden Gate Bridge and into the Pacific Ocean, seasick crewmates were “puking everywhere.” Ted was unfazed.

About 18 days later, the ship made it to a U.S. base on the island of Guam, which had been recaptured from Japan the year prior. 

That was where Ted was stationed when the United States dropped its first atomic bomb on Japan in Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.

“All we heard was that there was a terrible explosion. We had no idea the magnitude of it,” he said. 

At the time, he simply couldn’t believe that one bomb had destroyed an entire city. 

After Japan surrendered to the Allied Forces in September, ending the war, Ted stayed in Guam for 17 months, working his way up to a third-class petty officer. 

Following that, he was stationed on the destroyer USS Allen M. Sumner (DD-692), which embarked on a goodwill tour in February 1947 that began in Australia. 

“Oh, they did a hoorah there. They had a big paper that says, ‘The fleet’s in. Ladies, make the most of it,’” Ted recalled. 

The food in Australia was a marked improvement from the Navy diet of potatoes, beans and Spam. Ted and his crewmates also found weevils wriggling around in the bread they were served on multiple occasions.

“We used to hold it up at the light and pick them out, but pretty soon, we didn’t give a crap. Protein,” he joked. “A little cream or butter or something on them, and they went down just fine.”

Navy life was anything but glamorous. That was best exemplified by the hazing seasoned soldiers put rookies through the first time they crossed the International Date Line. 

Ted was forced to crawl through a garbage chute. Then, the onboard dentist “sprayed a bunch of crap in (his) mouth,” and his crewmates dunked him in a tub of water suspended on the side of the ship. 

There were elements of Navy life that were more breathtaking: watching flying fish gliding alongside the bulkhead using their batlike wings, and ginormous jellyfish dancing in a bay in China.

Ted’s service also took him to the Philippines and Japan before he left the Navy in January 1948.

Afterwards, he moved back to Hoytsville and quickly fell in love with his first wife, Pauline Brown, who later died following health complications related to a respiratory disease in 1983. 

Ted irrigated land for Pauline’s father, who was a Holstein cow breeder, and met her when they were both actors in a community play held by their Latter-day Saints ward. 

That thespian spirit never quite left Ted. He also acted in live performances as a Salt Lake Temple ordinance worker for 16 years. He knew almost all the parts of the performance — “even Satan” — which has since been replaced by a video.

Ted calls himself a jack of all trades, with a career and hobbies that have taken him on all sorts of adventures in Summit County. He lived in Hoytsville and Kamas most of his life until moving into Spring Gardens Senior Living in Heber City in January, where he lives with his second wife, JoAnn.

He worked for Mountain Fuel, the predecessor of Enbridge Gas, and was the head custodian at the Summit County Courthouse, roles he held for about a decade each.

He was also a small-time bobcat trapper and taxidermist. He even de-scented two skunks for his children to keep as pets. 

Fly fishing is his passion, and he even wrote a few articles with fishing advice for The Park Record.

He’s always been an artist, as evidenced by the doodles on postcards he sent his mother while he was in the Navy. He also got into photography in recent years and crafts his own frames from barn wood.

He was a milkman for 17 years and stumbled in the role of first responder several times while walking his route. For example, when a car went off the side of a hill, killing two parents and leaving their two children injured, he was the first on the scene, performing first aid.

Another time, a muscular man fell out of the top story of a bar, splatting on the ground. His friends remarked that he wasn’t much of a bouncer. That’s right, Ted is also an amateur comedian if he can find an audience that will endure his jokes.

His advice to younger people is simple: “Don’t have calluses on your ass. Get up and do something.”

Kendall’s suspicion is that his father has made it to 99 because he’s always been physically and mentally busy.

Ted’s daughter, DeAnn Witt, said her father would always do three miles of his milk route at the crack of dawn before coming home for breakfast. 

His mantra was, “You don’t get breakfast until you’ve earned it.”

The post World War II Navy veteran celebrates 99th birthday at Deer Valley East Village appeared first on Park Record.

Since mid-January, Jackie Nadel has been making the trek across Utah, Montana and Idaho to ski as fast as possible on a snow course while being yanked by a rope drawn from a horse — a fusion of cowboy and skiing culture known as skijoring. 

Nadel was one of dozens of competitors who committed to the first-ever Pro Skijor tour, which began in Heber City in January and ended in Kamas over the weekend. The competition involves a skier, pulled by a horse and its rider, weaving through gates and grabbing a ring while flying down the track and across a 15-foot-long jump as quickly as possible. 

“It was absolutely exhausting trying to balance skijoring and work,” Nadel said. “It was a lot of leaving late after bartending Thursday, Friday nights and coming back Saturday night at one, 2 in the morning, and then working the next day.”

But Nadel’s dedication paid off. Along with rider Kylee Nielson and a horse named Moose, her team, called “Babes of Glory,” won first place in Pro Skijor’s women’s division, narrowly beating out the “Stall Muckers” team composed of rider Nielson and skier Magnolia Neu.

“You become pretty good friends with everyone that you’re competing with,” Nadel said. “Even when I was neck-and-neck with Magnolia Neu … (or) she would beat me, I couldn’t be upset because I just love being able to watch my friends thrive and win.”

The competitors with the best times across the overall tour were invited to the finals on Sunday at High Star Ranch, where the winners were awarded prize money totaling $75,000 across five divisions: pro, sport (the division right behind pro in terms of skill level), women’s, snowboard and all-around, in which competitors must be able to ski and ride a horse, switching places with their teammate between competitions. 

But the most sought-after prizes, according to Pro Skijor co-founder Brian Gardner, were shiny belt buckles nearly the size of dinner platters, awarded to the first-place winners in each category.

Gardner founded Skijoring Utah, the predecessor to Pro Skijor, in 2017. The annual competition began at Soldier Hollow Nordic Center before being moved to venues in Heber City, such as the Wasatch County Events Complex. 

Gardner and co-founder Joe Loveridge both came from ranching families and were ski patrolmen for a decade at Sundance Mountain Resort. When they first learned about skijoring, they knew they had to bring it to Utah. 

“Utah has such a rich history in agriculture and farming and ranching,” Gardner said. “This sport draws two communities together that don’t always come together. … Maybe those people don’t normally hang out on a regular basis, but now, they’ve become best friends and teammates.”

With the help of media industry veteran Greg Lipstone, Gardner and Loveridge expanded the annual competition to a nationwide tour this year. The co-founders’ hopes are high. Over time, they’d like to add more tour stops and, eventually, circuits ranging from the East Coast to South America and Europe. 

“What we’re trying to do could be equated to UFC. I know that sounds big, but UFC, at one point, started here, a small, niche sport, and then they organized it and took it to the world,” Gardner said. 

Gardner, Loveridge and Lipstone aren’t the only people hoping to take advantage of skijoring’s growth. Entrepreneur Manjari Prakash traveled to the event from New York to take notes about the competition’s logistics: equipment, safety, insurance and so forth. She hopes to launch her own skijoring competition in Long Island. 

“Our horses are indoors, doing nothing all winter,” she said. “This is fabulous because a skier meets a rider and a horse. You’re not alone, (whereas) you ski alone. You ride a little bit alone.”

While Prakash thinks Long Island has the snow for skijoring — she “shoveled all last week” — the warmer climate in Utah was a challenge for the Pro Skijor organizers this year. Gardner’s never seen such high winter temperatures, which hovered around 50 to 60 degrees in Kamas on Sunday.

“The challenge this year hasn’t been snow. We can make snow. But it’s having the temperatures cold enough to make the snow,” Gardner said. 

That resulted in logistical difficulties. While the competition usually involves both horse and skier riding on snow, several of the competitions were changed so the horse would be running alongside the skier on a dirt path, so as to preserve the little snow on the course. 

While the finals competition on Sunday was supposed to be held at the Utah State Fairpark in Salt Lake City, it was moved to Kamas for the cooler temperatures at a higher elevation. 

“I reached out to the owner of High Star Ranch. … And they said, ‘We’re game.’ And in three weeks, we put this all together,” Lipstone said.

Despite the venue change, Pro Skijor garnered around 5,000 to 6,000 attendees over the two-day event. 

Lifelong friends Chase Vance, from Park City, and Ian Hoaglin, from Ogden, came to ski in practice runs between the finals competitions. 

Hoaglin crashed in what he described as a cartwheel as he came off the 4-foot-tall jump.

“I’m used to taking bodies. … This actually was a lot more pleasant than coming down a park jump,” he said. “I’ve got to find somebody who has a horse so I could be like, ‘Hey, let’s go practice,’ rather than just having to come (do this) baptism by fire every time we’re here.”

Hoaglin and Vance agreed that the most exhilarating part of the sport is being pulled by a horse. 

“I classify myself as a good skier. I’m pretty comfortable in all conditions. But there’s a lot to think about because you’re thinking about the horse, the rope, the gates, having enough rope behind you, enough rope in front of you. I don’t think I’ve ever been on more mental overdrive in anything,” Vance said. “If there’s anyone else who wants to try this for the first time, get as much information as you can from other riders. Just get the tips of what they suggest. But at the same time, if you have a good skiing background, trust your instincts and trust the physics.”

While Park City local Erica Hill has been skiing and horse riding for decades, she watched the competition from the sidelines rather than competing herself.

She came with her friend, Liana Mandryka. While moving the competition from Salt Lake City to Kamas may have been a pain for the organizers, the pair are glad the finals were held at High Star Ranch. 

“This feels like what it used to feel like at events in Park City where you could just rock up, park easily, hang out (and have) family-friendly fun,” Hill said. 

Mandryka said, “It definitely brought the homey, local vibe to it that might have been missing. If the location was Salt Lake City, it would not be the same.”

The post Pro Skijor gallops through Kamas appeared first on Park Record.

The Kamas City Council is poised to create its own wildland urban interface code to comply with a new state law intended to help Utahns fortify their homes against wildfires.

The state Legislature passed House Bill 48 last year as an attempt to mitigate wildfire risks in wildland urban interface areas, or WUIs, which refer to zones where human developments meet or “interface” with wildland, open spaces relatively untouched by humans.

The law required city governments to approve an ordinance adopting specific building codes for new developments in WUIs by Jan. 1. The ordinances would force new builds to use fire-resistant materials for structures in addition to ensuring a robust enough water system and roadway for fire crews to access the area in the event of a wildfire.

However, many municipalities in Utah, including Kamas, did not meet the deadline because of lingering questions regarding how the legislation works. Fire officials also said they were waiting on an updated statewide map of high-risk WUIs from the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, which was not published until late December.

Summit County Fire Warden Bryce Boyer told the Kamas City Council that he didn’t believe the state would punish the municipality for being out of compliance, but he encouraged councilors to create a WUI map for Kamas and adopt the required building codes by summer.

Under H.B. 48, the state can refuse to pay for the costs associated with damages and large-scale responses if the city were to experience a large wildfire without an ordinance in place, Boyer explained. That’s why Kamas must have a plan in place by wildfire season.

The bulk of the state law is directed toward homeowners, though, not city officials.

The law established a new annual fee between $20 and $100 for homeowners within a WUI, with the specific amount determined by the taxable square footage of the property. The funds will go back to Forestry, Fire and State Lands to pay for assessors, who will evaluate properties within the WUI to decide whether homeowners are complying with the building code.

The code encourages homeowners to “harden” their properties against fires by installing metal roofs, replacing wooden fences with fire-resistant materials, clearing roadways of brush and debris and other preventative measures.

“One of the components of this is not just the wildfire threat or the fire itself, but the ember base,” Boyer said, referring to the ability of a fire to spread quickly under certain conditions.

H.B. 48 additionally encourages homeowners to undergo assessments conducted by a certified Forestry, Fire and State Lands employee. The lot assessment will provide “mitigation actions” for the property, and homeowners who complete those mitigation actions will pay a reduced fee in return.

The Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands said assessments are not necessarily required, but a homeowner who does not obtain one will automatically be charged the highest fee and “considered to be at the highest risk.”

Boyer said the state passed H.B. 48 to prevent insurance companies from refusing coverage to homeowners in high-risk areas. Insurance companies must now refer to the state’s WUI map to determine whether a property is in a high-risk area, and homeowners are able to have their homes classified as lower risk, or bumped off the map entirely, by complying with the home hardening measures.

“We were starting to see insurance companies not insuring in the county and significantly raising people’s rates,” Boyer said. “Part of House Bill 48 is to try to head that off, requiring insurance companies to primarily use our mapping to point out where the highest risk areas are. It’s also a way for us to say, ‘Look, we’ve been working on this, and we are continuing to work on it with our homeowners and property owners to have them reduce their risk.’ We’re trying to ensure that folks can still get home insurance and be able to afford it in this state, not just this county.”

He added that the move is good for local fire departments, too, because it encourages people to harden their homes, which has been difficult for officials to enforce without state oversight.

“We’ve only had a carrot, and there was no stick in the past to get people to do defensible things, like structure hardening,” Boyer said. “This puts a little bit of a stick in it because if you’re not (doing it), you’re going to be hit with a higher premium.”

The Kamas City Council indicated it plans to adopt the ordinance and WUI map at its next meeting. Information on the WUI legislation, including an FAQ and resources for homeowners, is available by visiting ffsl.utah.gov/wuirisk.

Homeowners can specifically check whether their property is considered high-risk by going to wildfirerisk.utah.gov and typing their address into the Utah Wildfire Risk Assessment portal.

The post Kamas to adopt wildland urban interface ordinance to mitigate wildfire danger, comply with state law appeared first on Park Record.

Casey O’Leary is proud to be the first professional tattoo artist to open a studio in Kamas.

The tattoo parlor — aptly dubbed Kamas Tattoo — occupies the back corner of the Main Street Salon. The space might seem unassuming, but the journey from its conception to doors opening this fall took more behind-the-scenes work than most businesses: O’Leary personally petitioned the Kamas City Council to change zoning laws to allow tattoo studios.

“It took a little while to get everything through the (Summit County) Health Department and the city’s zoning laws because they had it classified under adult businesses, like strip clubs and things like that,” O’Leary said. “We had to help them change the verbiage and get it zoned to allow tattoo shops.”

Kamas is the second city along the Wasatch Back to allow tattoo shops in recent months. The Kamas City Council in September approved an ordinance removing body art facilities, including tattoo parlors and piercing studios, from the city’s list of adult and sexually oriented businesses. Those businesses included adult book stores, adult video stores, adult novelty stores, adult motion picture theaters and adult theaters in addition to body modification facilities.

The Heber City Council similarly voted over the summer to reverse the city’s ban on body art facilities, which was implemented in 2012. The move was the result of a five-month debate among the City Council, Heber City Planning Commission and Oakley Franklin, a local tattoo artist who requested the city revise its code, much like O’Leary.

O’Leary is originally from Northern California, but he moved to Utah when he was 10 because his sister joined the U.S. Air Force. He bounced around California and Nevada as a young adult, working odd jobs, such as being a phlebotomist in Lake Mammoth, California, when he started making enough money to afford tattoos 17 years ago.

“I was going down to Gardnerville, Nevada, and I’d bring my own designs. The guy who was tattooing me said I should show the owner, and I did, and then I started working with him,” O’Leary said.

Securing an apprenticeship was one thing, but it was also a big commitment. Not only was O’Leary learning how to create and tattoo permanent pieces of artwork onto human skin, he was commuting three hours to make it happen.

“I really like working for myself, talking to people and drawing fun stuff,” O’Leary said. “It’s really laid back compared to a lot of the other jobs I’ve done, and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else now.”

O’Leary eventually returned to Utah, moving to Oakley four years ago with his wife. He said they prefer the slower pace of life in a rural town, but it was difficult for him to drive to tattoo parlors in Salt Lake City for work every day. That’s why he started exploring the idea of opening his own studio in Kamas.

“My wife was getting her nails done (at the Main Street Salon), and she was talking to somebody there about how I was looking for a spot to do some tattoos,” O’Leary said. “The owner said they had an extra room there that I could possibly rent, so I jumped on it.”

His goal is to eventually open a dedicated tattoo parlor on Main Street once the shop gains more traction, O’Leary said. Until then, he’s focusing on gathering a client base and advertising Kamas Tattoo to the Wasatch Back community by offering both flash tattoos and custom designs.

“I was always really interested in traditional tattoos because I loved that old school look, and from there I got really interested in Japanese tattooing,” he said. “I’m still learning some techniques from my friends in Salt Lake who really excel in it, and then I do fine line work, too, because a lot of people like to get names and script and tiny things like that.”

O’Leary said he plans to offer discounts to locals and customers who served in the military as a way to give back to the Kamas Valley community. He has experience in a variety of styles, including traditional, Japanese and fine line tattoos.

“I’m on Instagram and Facebook, and I’m really trying to start advertising by passing out cards and getting one of those little sandwich boards for the front of the store,” O’Leary said. “It’s all word of mouth right now, but in a year or so, I hope things are more off the ground, and we can get into a brick and mortar store rather than being tucked away.”

Information on Kamas Tattoo, including how to book an appointment and photos of O’Leary’s previous work, is available by visiting kamastattoo.com.

The post Kamas Tattoo makes its mark as first professional studio on the East Side appeared first on Park Record.

The new owners of the DeJoria Center are working with the Kamas City Council to potentially create a new property tax to fund projects and improvements on the High Star Ranch property.

The proposal centers on establishing a public infrastructure district that would act similarly to a municipal government. Developers can borrow money by selling bonds to investors, while property owners in the district pay an extra property tax. The funds generated by the tax are used to pay off the bond over a period of up to 30 years. The money can only be used to build and improve infrastructure within the district.

The creation of a public infrastructure district would only apply to taxpayers living within the district. The new owners said they plan for the tax to only apply to new residents, not anyone who has already purchased a home and is already living on the property.

The money is also held in a trust, meaning developers cannot personally profit from the tax and must fill out an application with their bank to withdraw funds.

George Wright, one of the four developers, said the public infrastructure district would let his development team build quickly while maintaining a quality product. He added that their goal isn’t to change the development agreement already established with the Kamas City Council and the previous High Star Ranch owner, but to ensure the vision outlined in the document can become a reality.

The DeJoria Center closed late last year, and the four developers purchased 16 acres of the High Star Ranch property, including the event center, over the summer.

The development agreement includes a 150-room hotel associated with the DeJoria Center, an underground parking garage, 17 single-family residential homes and a water tank. The public infrastructure district does not give the owners the ability to change zoning, approve developments without oversight from the City Council or modify the development agreement.

“On the financing side, the city’s benefit is infrastructure without city debt,” explained owner Shane Starr. “We have to put in public infrastructure. The challenge on the financing side, of course, is there is an oversight responsibility, so the city must still review, approve and monitor the development that is taking place.”

The maximum amount of funding the developers plan to pursue through the tax is around $56 million, but the number may ultimately decrease as blueprints, amenities and timelines are solidified. 

Starr said the community would benefit economically as the hotel and other amenities create jobs, as well as strengthening property values and creating retail spaces in the Kamas Valley. There is an additional opportunity to provide benefits to Kamas residents by offering them discounted hotel rooms and giving them access to amenities on the property, he said.

“The biggest cost of this will be appropriated to the hotel and its tenants and the commercial side of it and all of the retail that goes with it, so in reality, that’s where most of the levy will be placed,” added Mitch Burton, another one of the owners.

If the tax revenues fail to meet expectations and cannot fully pay off the debt, the burden and risk fall back on the bondholders, not the city or residents. The bondholders participating in public infrastructure districts tend to be larger investment firms, such as Goldman Sachs, according to Starr.

Moreover, the city’s involvement in the public infrastructure district ends once it is operational. The district is then considered an independent entity and is governed by a board charged with making district-related decisions.

Currently, the four owners hold 16 acres of the overall High Star Ranch property, but a deal to close on 400 more acres is in progress and should be completed by early December. The developers requested the City Council approve an annexation clause as part of the proposal, which would then let them implement the tax on surrounding properties they acquire in the future without needing to return to the City Council.

The annexation is not traditional, as in land becoming incorporated into a municipality, and the High Star Ranch property is already within city limits. Instead, annexation in this case refers to expanding the borders of the public infrastructure district and encompassing more properties willing to pay the tax.

The City Council was initially worried about the annexation clause, expressing a hesitation to give developers the freedom to impose the tax at will as properties are acquired. However, Wright, Starr and Burton clarified that property owners outside of the district boundaries would need to consent to annexation, meaning the tax is, essentially, voluntary.

There’s also a full disclosure requirement, so any potential home buyers looking to purchase property within the district boundaries would be given information about the additional tax up front.

Kamas City Mayor Matt McCormick said his biggest concern with the development is water usage, pointing out the developers’ plans to build 180 units total between the hotel rooms, single-family residences and workforce housing. The property is currently only equipped to handle around 150 units.

McCormick suggested the developers provide a written document detailing the plans for installing the water tank outlined in the development agreement before trying to obtain permits for further construction.

The City Council deferred the decision about the district for a second time, opting to hold a work session with the developers instead. The four men said they hope to have the public infrastructure district established by the end of December to give them time to solidify their plans, obtain permits and start construction in the spring.

Further discussion on the proposed district is slated for mid-November.

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Kamas City Councilor David Darcey spent three decades working as an accountant and financial specialist for an energy company in Oklahoma, a career he attributes to his early education in the South Summit School District.

Darcey was born in Heber City and raised in Kamas, graduating from South Summit High School in 1979. He briefly worked for Blazzard Lumber, a staple of the Kamas community since the 1950s, as a logger before marrying his wife and moving to Salt Lake City to pursue two bachelor’s degrees in accounting and finance at the University of Utah.

A promotion in 1998 spurred a move to Oklahoma, where Darcey oversaw strategy and market intelligence in addition to spearheading project analysis initiatives for an energy company. 

Exactly 20 years later, Darcey retired and moved back to his hometown of Kamas. He has since served on the Kamas City Council and Eastern Summit County Planning Commission.

“I’ve been blessed to be able to retire and have the time to spend on it,” Darcey said. “I feel like quite a bit of my private career was over strategy and numbers and things like that, so it comes easily to me to look at city budgets and plan for the future. … This town is what I would call home, and I wanted to give back to the community.”

Darcey was elected to the Kamas City Council in 2021 and started his term the following January. He’s now running for reelection, hoping to earn a second term and continue his work serving Kamas residents.

“The council works as a true team,” Darcey said. “I think the rest of the council views me as the numbers guy, and I feel like I’ve taken it upon myself to really deep dive into our budget. … It’s what I was trained to do, so I think everybody looks to me.”

Kamas has a budget of around $1 million, with $400,000 earned through property taxes. Darcey said he enjoys looking through the revenue streams and finding ways to increase the city’s efficiency and fund necessary projects while also advocating for residents.

One recent example, he said, involved a proposed franchise agreement between the city and an internet service provider. Darcey took the time to investigate franchise agreements between the company and other counties in Utah and discovered provisions offering more protections to the city were not in the drafted agreement with Kamas. He was then able to negotiate with the company to add those provisions.

“People can rest assured that I’m going to be looking at our finances, at our budgets and doing my homework,” Darcey said. “I have the time … and I think I’ve proven many times in the past how much homework and research I will do.”

Darcey said there are a few challenges he expects Kamas to face in the next four years, including annexation requests, affordable housing and negotiations regarding a proposed 150-room hotel on the High Star Ranch property.

Specifically, Darcey said the development agreement with High Star Ranch guarantees the right to build a hotel, but the details, including mitigating efforts for neighbors, are not included in the document. That means the City Council will likely need to negotiate with developers on the design and scope of the project.

“They say the hotel is supposed to be symbiotic with the Dejoria Center, so that might make it a little different than the hotels in Francis,” Darcey said. “It’s interesting to me to see all these hotels popping up all of a sudden, and I’m wondering if we do need that many, but people have the right to build on their property if the code allows them to do so.”

Darcey pointed to past annexation requests, such as the Ballerina Farm annexation, as examples of people wanting to join the city. However, he said it’s important for the City Council to consider the effects each annexation will have on its residents, especially negative impacts on sewer lines, roads and other infrastructure.

“The challenges to Kamas will be the rural gentrification in this valley,” Darcey said. “People cannot build a house and keep it affordable for somebody earning a real living. I have teachers two blocks from where I live who only make $60,000, and $60,000 is not enough to buy anything in this valley. Even tear-down homes are going for at least $675,000 or so, and that’s really bad.”

He encouraged voters to support his campaign because of his experience as a city councilor and a financial specialist, saying he’s developed his expertise over the last four years in office.

“I now know the workings of the city, and I feel like I am contributing now and feel like I am a critical component as we work as a team,” Darcey said.

Two Kamas City Council seats are on the ballot this November. Darcey is one of three candidates vying for the position, along with Michael Georgi and Steve Cyr. Darcey is the only incumbent running for reelection.

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